The Most Consequential Presidential Election in American History

The year 1876 saw Alexander Graham Bell awarded a patent for the telephone. Wyatt Earp became a lawman in Dodge City, Kansas. Native American Chief Crazy Horse won decisive battles against General George Crook. Eight days later, Crazy Horse joined Sitting Bull in defeating forces led by Lieutenant Colonel George Custer. The Jesse James gang was almost wiped out during an attempted bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, and what would become Meharry Medical College opened in Nashville, Tennessee, the first medical school for African Americans.

Ulysses Grant began the year entering his eighth and final year as President. Henry Wilson was his Vice-President who died in late 1875 and was not replaced. 1876 was a Presidential election year. New York Governor Samuel Tilden was the Democratic candidate. The Republicans selected former Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes as their nominee.

The 1876 Election was one of the closest in American history and wasn’t decided until almost four months after the November 11, 1876 election date. The Compromise of 1877 was an unwritten, backroom deal between members of Congress that allowed the Republican Hayes to assume the Presidency, provided he agreed to remove federal troops from Southern states that were protecting the rights of freed enslaved people resulting from the end of the Civil War a dozen years before.

After a jumpy start that saw the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and a surge in violence against the formerly enslaved people once the war ended. A Republican Congress got serious about the rights of Black people, passing the 14th and 15th Amendments and the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870 and 1871, which led to significant numbers of Black men voting, filling several seats in Congress, state legislatures, and a few statewide offices. There was still a lot of violence against the newly freed citizens, with their primary protection being the federal troops. Black women were often the rape victims of those same troops, so their presence wasn’t all beneficial.

By most measures, Democrat Tilden was the most likely election winner. He led in both Electoral College votes and the popular vote. Tilden had 184 uncontested Electoral College votes, needing only one more to secure victory. Four states, Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina, submitted two sets of electors (sound familiar), leaving the contest undecided.

Had Tilden won the election, the Republicans still would have the Senate, and removing the troops wouldn’t have been likely. By ceding the Presidency, Southern Democrats got what they wanted most: the removal of the soldiers. Still-President Grant removed the troops from Florida in a show of good faith. When Hayes took over on March 3, 1877, he saw to the removal of the remaining forces.

The results of the 1876 election led directly to the end of the Reconstruction Era. Soon there were no Black representatives in the House of Representatives or the Senate. The combination of the Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts, White Councils, Jim Crow Laws, and lynchings kept Black people in the South from voting in any meaningful numbers.

Jim Crow was the law of the land, not only in the South but in many Northern and Western states as well. For all practical purposes, there was no Black representation in government at any level, and whites replaced most Black civil servants. The year after Hayes took office, he passed the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which guaranteed federal troops would no longer return to the states for the general protection of Black people.

Before his election in 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes had a reputation for being a staunch abolitionist. To gain the Presidency, Hayes and the Republican Party sold out the newly freed Black people, giving them their first lesson in citizenship. Without a seat at the table and full representation, you are subject to the whims of others seeking power. Native Americans saw America change from a policy of assimilation to one of isolationism. America protected the interests of whites looking for gold and broke treaties when they allowed encroachment on land belonging to Native Americans. That election changed America in ways that it has never recovered, especially for Black and Native American people.

Every election is important, and the case can be made that the 2024 Election will be the most consequential ever. 2024 has a ways to go if it wants to surpass 1876. Is it petty to mention that the Compromise of 1877 and Posse Comitatus are nowhere to be found in Florida’s Black History Guidelines? Asking for a friend.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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